Rumor: Nintendo to remove office restriction for indie developers

Lately Nintendo has been turning around its reputation for being unfriendly to indie developers, with solid eShop releases from established developers like Frozenbyte and Broken Rules. However, it looks like Nintendo may be opening up development on the Wii U to “garage developers” who may not have official office space. This is great news for many sole developers, or developers who work solely from home (Edmund McMillen comes to mind).

The policy for Nintendo development has always been that in order to receive a development kit, a developer must have a dedicated business place. For many small time developers, offices just aren’t an option. So what’s changing? According to a tweet from Dan Adelman, who is part of business development at Nintendo, a whole lot.

By shying away from the dedicated space policy, Nintendo opens itself to the world of independent developers that go beyond studios. TIGSource has always been a hive of creativity for indie development and those who work out of offices on the site are definitely in the minority. Of course, a tweet is certainly not an official announcement, but we’re hoping that Nintendo will realize that so many great games have been one or two people productions.

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RyuNoHadouken

yes, the more avenues for game development the better off we’ll all be

http://www.mpt-online.eu/ Sylux

I think it’s a wise decision from N to make that happen.

Nintendo has always been to proud, not only towards Indy developers but also towards 3rd party developers, it’s no secret N had a massive argument with Squaresoft in the late 90’s before it became Square-Enix we all know how that ended up (FFVII didn’t come for the N64 anymore but for PS instead, and all that which happened afterwards, it’s only the past few years they’re getting along better again, FFIII and FFIV DS anyone? Later FFIV the afteryears)

But also N has been a serious pain towards retail stores in the past (got this from a VERY reliable source) and the fact that in the more resent past N was also a pain towards Indy developers.

I really think N is making the right decision with that, so let’s hope the rumor becomes fact. Maybe N will end up in a different light, more positive light for the developers eyes.

Jhal Fullantes

They didn’t have a “massive argument” with Squaresoft, it’s just that Nintendo stick with cartridges which has a very limited space that time, that is why they decided to release it on Playstation.

Sdudyoy

Yes, this would be GREAT! (Saying that some GOOD developers get a hold of this.)

Travis Nelson

kind of misinterpreted the title as “Nintendo is releasing a copy of the Wii U SDK online for eShop devs” but I am dumb and proven wrong, so uh

This is cool, it will help indie developers who don’t have enough money to buy an office : D

http://www.facebook.com/trevor.buttler Eric Brady

this could be good in indie developers would make more than side scrollers, come on guys the wiiu can do much better than that

They said they were trying to attract I-Phone devs so this makes sense.

Look trolls. I know you want to try and justify your more expensive “super” consoles by convincing yourselves Nintendo is going to lose 100% third party support but it isn’t going to happen. Nintendo are being too kind to indie devs and will be too strong in Japan for them to lose significant support in that region (especially when Xbox flops).

You just don’t want to see them with third party support because the only thing you have to justify your precious power is GRAPHICS! They are fixing the bridges burned between companies.

Elem187

I don’t think the xbox will flop. The next Sony box will, because, well, its Sony. They haven’t made a profit on their video gaming division since the PS2… The PS3 is still in the red, the Vita was a flop, the move was a flop.

And if the rumors are true and they are going with a Radeon 7000 series, then the game rendering power will only be 20% over the Wii U’ 6000 series…. hardly a massive mind blowing leap in technology.

Colin Tosh

I’m talking about Xbox in Japan. It will definitely flop in Japan

J_Joestar

Yeah, still a lot of Xenophobic distaste for the Xbox in Japan, something which will probably not fade any time soon.

http://www.twitter.com/DJ_Link David Amador

That would be very good news indeed

Seth S. Scott

YES YES YES!

MujuraNoKamen

I don’t like to go off-topic but did anyone hear? Satoru Iwata will announce NEW WII U GAMES in a Nintendo direct tomorrow at 2PM UK time.

Elem187

The worst thing I can see happening is opening the flood gates and you get 15,000 terrible games to maybe 50 great ones.

It would make it VERY hard for the good ones to peak through…. iOS suffers from this badly.

Kieran Sedgwick

This is a conceptual problem, not a reason not to open up the platform.

IMHO, it’s better to make the Wii U an indie dev’s dream platform than to shut it down because Nintendo can’t come up with a way to ensure the best always rises to the top.